The Eve I remember was difficult. Extremely difficult, but from just the surface changes I’ve been seeing makes me wonder if my White Whale morphed into a dolphin. In fact. this was a meme floating around for quite some time:

For example, I had a blueprint for a Victorieux Luxury Yacht. I was parked in Jita and just thought “What the hell. Let me see if I can build this”, so I clicked on the station’s industry icon fully expecting it to be completely full. In the Eve I remembered, a station could only handle a job if it had a free slot. Meaning other players could use the station for building crap, however once the slots were full, you had to wait until one became available to do your thing. It seems now you can run any job at any station. I don’t know if it’s skill dependent but I can run off 3 jobs simultaneously in any station that has Industrial facilities.

This is what concerns me. The whole point of that restriction would be so players are forced to join corporations that have their own POS (Player Owned Stations) in nullsec or wormholes and you can churn out your ships, ammo, or whatever you’re building there. With this one change, it could seriously undermine the point of manufacturing if anyone can do it anywhere. I’ve also read that the POS’s are bring phased out for “Upwell Structures“. I don’t know enough about these to have an opinion on this or not, but just noting that it’s something happening.

There are some other concerns that I have that I’ll post more about, but this is where it stands now. I’m neither giving a thumbs up or thumbs down, but I’m leery of the changes made so far.

I’d be completely remiss if I didn’t call attention to the free twitch deal going on right now for Eve Online. If you’re a member of Twitch Prime (you get it free if you’re an Amazon Prime member), you can get some pretty sweet loot. 15 days free Omega subscription time, 150,000 skill points and best of all, a Sunesis destroyer with an exclusive skin:

Sunesis with limited edition skin

Make sure you pick this up even if you’re already an Omega subscriber, as you’ll get the 15 free days added to your game time. I verified this on my own account.

If you’re an Alpha subscriber, now is the perfect chance to see how the other half lives. No restrictions on ships or skills, and you get 2x skill training time. Well worth it.

All you need is a Twitch Prime account and to link your Eve account. Claim the items and they’ll be waiting for you when you next log in. That’s all there is to it.

I decided to give myself a burn scar. Space is a dangerous place, after all.

I’m going to pretend I got this saving orphans and nuns from a burning spaceship.

Next, I tossed that ugly brown jacket for the Empyrean Dragons jacket. I had a couple hundred plex from… something, no idea what, and paid 75 for it from the New Eden store.

My. Aren’t we regal looking.

Next, pants, boots, etc. Nothing special there.

All my hard work paid off in the form of this:

Sauriel kickin’ it with style.

Last, but certainly not least, the portrait. The defining image that all will see in the Eve universe. After playing with some backgrounds, lighting, poses, etc, I finally managed to get something I’m pretty happy with. Just to compare, I went from this:

To this:

Definite improvement, if I do say so myself.

Join us for the next post, true believers, as I go through the tutorials and find out what’s changed since I last played.

I know what several of you are thinking. “WTF is he jabbering on about?! Just play the game already!”

I’m getting to that, but there’s one final step before I begin my excursions, which I’m going to explain right now.

Years ago I read of a study done where people were given games to play. Some people had avatars that were considered “ugly” and the others were given “attractive” ones.

The study concluded that the subjects given the attractive avatars were more extroverted and confident in the game than their “ugly” counterparts. Not only that, but these behaviors persisted outside the game as well.

I
bring this up because this is what I see when I log into Eve:

I must have drank 8 pints of What-The-Fuck ale before I created this thing. I actually wince when log in and see it.

Let’s
analyze, shall we?

My hair looks like it was drawn by a lazy manga artist drunk on sake. For some reason I chose a pockmarked face. (with all due respect to Robert Davi). And the pose… I’m sitting there with my left shoulder facing forward. You can almost imagine my hand on my knee while sitting on the toilet trying to force a bowel movement when constipated.

Somehow, I managed to get cockeyed eyes as well. Now, I know there isn’t a “cockeyed” setting in the character creation, so I’m not sure how I wound up with that.

If Mel Brooks taught us anything, cross eyed people make for terrible marksman

Now lets have a gander at those clothes.

Look at that jacket. Maybe I thought it looked sort of Han Solo smuggler-ish at the time, but I definitely don’t think so anymore. Now I think it should be burned with fire.

My pants look like they have compartments that are partially inflated. I guess that’s good if you’re deep sea diving and need buoyancy, but it serves no purpose in the game.

In the next post you’ll see me undo this partial birth abortion that is my current avatar into a lean, mean, sleeper slaying, ‘rat killing machine. Well… at least an avatar that looks like one.

Hey all. Just wanted to do a quick check in, lest you think this site has been abandoned. I assure you it hasn’t. In fact, I have a 2-parter post coming up. It should be up sometime between tomorrow or Wednesday.

I spend a good portion of yesterday in Eve moving around a lot of my stuff, trying to consolidate all the crap I collected over the years. Unfortunately, I don’t have the skills (or Isk) to get a big-ass hauler, so I just got an Iteron Mark V and filled the low power slots with cargo extenders.

I’m well aware that it’s gankbait, but I’m not hauling anything too precious, so no loss if it gets destroyed.

Just wanted to make sure I didn’t miss my daily post rule I set for myself. I’m currently working on setting up a blog/travel laptop to make my sojourns into writing that much easier. (Currently typing things hunched over a coffee table at an angle) Going to work on it all night and see if I can’t have the sucker set up by late night/early morning.

I have several post ideas I intend on following through on, but I’d like a little more spit and polish on them before they go up. But this is an Eve Online blog, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t bring up at least one thing Eve related.

Back when I was killing pirates solo, I had a favorite ship. I decked it out, loaded it with drones and just took to the blackness of space. The Myrmidon.

Not the prettiest by any stretch of the imagination, but something about it appealed to me. Plus, I love drones. They’re like mechanical pets you can send out to swarm your enemies with until their shields and armor weaken and they explode. It filled me with a sense of joy.

I have no idea what the current state of the Myrmidon is right now in Eve, with the continual changes and updates. All I do know is it’ll always hold a special place in my heart.

I was thrilled when Eve Online came out in 2003. It was really the first space MMO. As soon as it hit the stores, I picked up my copy. (That’s right. Physical copy when first released)

I had loads of fun. Mining, shooting down pirates, etc. Even the skill progression system impressed me. When not logged into the game, your character raises his or her skills (albeit very slowly)

Then it grew. Major changes and updates were coming out on a regular basis. Now it’s this massive universe with countless activities to invest time in. I want to play it so bad.

Here’s the rub. I suck at it. Actually, let me rephrase that. I SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK at it.

Part of the problem is I have severe anxiety. I need 2 xanax to leave the house if I go more than a few blocks. I’m incredibly shy, even with the anonymity of the internet, and will rarely chat with people, even within my own guild. Voice chat? Unthinkable. PvP? Instant panic mode and a quick death.

If you are familiar with Eve, unless you want to stick to “carebear mining” or solo operation missions, you need to be in a corp/alliance. This is pretty much mandatory. My shyness is one big motherfucker of an obstacle to that.

I love Eve. The universe is wonderful. Everything from ship customization to combat to exploration to the economy is amazing.

Now, let me make this clear. My personal issues are only part of the problem. There are thousands of strategies you can use when building ship loadouts alone, so it’s very easy to be overwhelmed. On top of that, the Eve universe is full of very, very smart people. Now, I’m not stupid, but I’m also aware when I walk into a room, I’m not the smartest person in it. Also, Eve has a very high population of current or ex-military players. So when you’re surrounded by people of that ilk, it’s more than a little intimidating.

I’m entering into a bold experiment. I intend to get good at Eve. As you can tell from the URL, I’m on a mission. I’m giving myself a three month window, with the exception of a little over a week break in late August when I have a vacation planned.

I hope to update this blog daily with my experiences within Eve

Eve online is my white whale. I think about it even when I haven’t logged in for a year. I keep my subscription going, and just fill the skill queue with about 6 months worth of learning, and leave it alone.

Let’s make clear what this blog is: A record of my activities and progress in Eve Online.

What this blog isn’t: A guide to learning how to play. There are much better, much more involved guides and tutorials out there that I can’t hope to compete with.

Anyway, I may succeed, I may fail, but I will have tried to ensure I enjoy something I love to its fullest.